


Close Your Eyes, Cover Your Ears

by wubz-bubx-redux (Inorganic_soot)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Repression, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, this is how I deal with shit, trans!Dipper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 07:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11732622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inorganic_soot/pseuds/wubz-bubx-redux
Summary: When Dipper was three years old, his cousin asked him for something he didn't understand until far, far later.





	Close Your Eyes, Cover Your Ears

**Author's Note:**

> I've slept less than three hours and I wrote this in another hour. Great start to a day, really.

Dipper did not always know he was a boy. He has always known, however, that boys, real boys, whose parents have always called them son and whose baby pictures are dowsed with blue, look different from him in parts that matter. He does not find that disconcerting until far, far later.  
  
He doesn't think about it often. But it lingers, at the edges of consciousness, on the edges of his mind. He doesn’t like but it is always there.

When he remembers something he wants to curl into a ball. Crouch on the floor and tuck his head between his knees. He wants to find a piece of furniture and hide under it, become part of it, stock still and wooden and dead. He used to when he was young. It made him feel safe. He hasn't wanted to do that for years, this is different from how he deals with things, now he lies under the blankets of his bed, layers them on and hides. Mostly, he reads.

He wants to scream but he can’t. He’s always screaming.

He's never told anyone, not Mabel, not Stan, not anyone. He’ll have to go somewhere, talk about things he doesn’t want to even consider. It doesn’t help that he has always hated doctors, with their pointed questions and fake compassion and the way they always, _always_ call him ‘little girl’ like they know better

The memory is hazy, illusory, a dark black thing. He is small, smaller than he is now. The sofas and chairs tower above him like buildings. His cousin is there too, also tall and his head cresting the sky. He takes Dipper's hand and brings it closer. His palm are big and warm, if he closes his eyes, he can smell smoke and pretend they are crossing the street  
  
He feels foolish but perhaps his mind is playing tricks on him, twins run in his family as much as mental illness does. It would not be surprising if this was all a story he made up when he was too young to understand. When he is older, old enough to have his own computer and password, he is compelled to search ‘Repressed childhood memories,’ fingers trembling and half-regretful, he adds ‘sexual trauma.’ The results load instantly. He doesn't expect to find anything. It is, therefore, startling – no, it is frightening, frightening, _frightening_ – that he can understand some of these things. Many of these things. Too many.  
  
Dipper knew about sex young. He doesn't know how he knew. He attributed it to precocity or a preternatural understanding of biology that all humans have. He was wrong.  
  
There are things he does not dwell on, odd snatches of memory. He played with dolls when he was younger, contorting them into lewd sexual positions. He had the sense of mind to do it alone, when no one was there. He was 5. He had always known the mechanics of sex. Even before he knew how to tie his shoelaces, he was 8 when he learnt that.  
  
This confuses him. How could he have known? It is not logical, it does not make sense. Who could have told him? How could they have told him? He didn't have the Internet. He barely watched TV. How did he know? It should be impossible. It should be, but it isn’t.  
  
It is not something he likes to admit but Dipper wet the bed until long after it was appropriate, if it was ever appropriate. It was only after his mother threatened him with the doctor that it stopped. It made his skin crawl. He didn’t want to go there. Dipper didn't tell her it was because he stopped drinking water until he really, _really_ needed it. She was happy. He was 9.  
  
He remembers lying face down on the bed at 7, breathing heavy and slow, thinking about the twisting and writhing of two bodies together, the catch and slide of slick body parts. It did not excite him. It merely was. He lay like that for hours.  
  
He doesn't remember holding anything, or feeling anything. He remembers the part directly before, reaching out. Always reaching out and never touching. A hand locked in permanent stasis. Closer and closer but never there. Never, ever there. He remembers the soft whiteness of underwear against tan skin. A pure and clean colour. Hateful and sick. To be fair, though, he did not like white before that either.  
  
He doesn't know what a penis looks like exactly. Only the vague shape of it. A long, soft object at the crumbling edges of his memory. His cousin told him it was armour, that he was still too young to have it but he would, one day. _Come on. You’ll get it too, it’s not weird._ He remembers that they said that it was also on their elbows and knees, but they lost those _. This is the last piece I have. Go on. Touch it_. Goading. It was his cousin, his bigger brother in all but blood. Dipper was a smart child, discerning and skeptical to a fault, but this was family. He trusted him and complied.

He played no games of "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours." He doesn't like them. It makes him feel sick.  
  
His last clear memory was when he is six and getting something from the kitchen. Someone is there – parent’s friend, a contractor, an adult, faceless– too. He didn’t know them but he smiled politely and got himself a glass of water.  He felt a hard press against the center of his back. He knows enough to run away but not enough to tell his parents. This all petered down as he got older and more cognizant. It did not for Mabel. Every year that Dipper grew father and farther away from it, she grew closer. People bothered her on planes. She was young and had a wide, forgiving, sweet-cheeked face. He is not a particularly violent person but he wants to kill every person who touches her.  
  
It hurts his head sometimes. It hurts his head a lot. He likes answers. He likes right and wrong, black and white, good and evil. He likes math and science because there is only one solution, one answer, one question. It calms him. They were 13 when they did this and they were young. It doesn't stop him from not being able to sleep. But it calms him, they didn’t understand either. At least, he hopes that because if it is not true then—

No. No. No.

He wonders if his cousin has forgotten. He never will. And in spite of that, he forgives him. He doesn't know why he did it but the man is kind now. Never touches him much, a smiling face in the crowd of annual family gatherings. He's not scared of him. He's just confused. He likes answers. He likes stories with endings, not half-smudged snippets tied together with the loose string of time. He doesn't like this. He doesn't like not knowing, but he will spend his life not knowing. Maybe it is better that way.

**Author's Note:**

> So wait, you all don't repress and disassociate to deal with things? Weird.


End file.
